Predators 3

During off-season Miguel’s Diving staff are mostly confined to muck diving. This past weekend one muck dive along a mud and sand slope provided several first time sightings. This included encounters with muck predators. One surprise was finding three Ceylonese nudibranchs (Gymnodoris ceylonica). Don’t let their pallid, translucent skin and neatly ordered orange spots fool you. They are voracious predators that like to eat other nudibranchs. They are known to move to shallows en masse for mating. Since we found them among tuffs of algae at three meters, perhaps they have more than food on their minds.

At 20 meters we saw a beautiful Napoleon snake eel (Ophichthus bonaparti) swimming along the mud bottom. This eel’s white and dark banded body is only seen occasionally, since it likes to stay buried in the sand to wait for passing prey. Almost a meter long, this eel quickly decided the best way to elude divers was to enter the sand tail first, leaving only its spotted nose sticking out. Even though swimming fish seem to be its prime food source, we are not sure that the numerous thumb-sized, baby flounders we found are safe from this predator.

Not to be out done in conjuring terror was a giant mantis shrimp. It was still in its perfectly cylindrical, lined burrow. It watched us with strange eyes. The hole of its burrow was about 10 cm in diameter, which it filled. Even ordinary, small mantis shrimp species can split open shells with their pincers – or lay open a human finger to the bone with one snap. We can only imagine what damage a huge one like this could inflict. Could this creature battle alien predators in the next movie sequel? No need to wait at the box office. Search for it yourself in the equatorial waters of Gorontalo.